In the relevant research literature, the thrust of energy management has been directed toward adjustment of the sampling frequency to conserve energy. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 7,318,010 (Anderson) describes a node utilizing a fixed energy management plan which is downloaded to a sensor node and then used to adjust the sampling rates of the sensors reporting to that node. Although such protocols may enable nodes to last for a specified lifetime, they do not necessarily return the most useful range of information from the node during that lifetime.